Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start...

Day 675: Mindwarp, Episode Four (The Trial of a Time Lord, Episode Eight) 

Dear diary, 

I've never been overly fond of Peri's exit from Doctor Who, in either this form, or the alternative that gets offered during the end of the Trial season. I'm not entirely sure what doesn't sit right about it with me (it certainly not the fact that a companion dies, because I think that works wonders in the cases of Katarina, Sara, and Adric), but I've always thought that it stick out as simply being wrong somehow. 

Watching the episode today, though, I can't help but realise just how effective it is! I mean... it's brutal. I think the moment that it really starts to turn and you suddenly realise how much you fear for Peri is when Crozier orders her head shaved, and it feels so out of nowhere, and something that we can relate to so easily, especially given that Peri's hair has been allowed to grow out this season, fuller than we've seen it before. 

It then also shocked me when we cut back to the laboratory a little while later, and it's been done! I know from seeing the story before that Nicola Bryant goes out wearing a bald cap, but I'd sort of forgotten just how effectively it works, and I love that they don't make a big deal of it. We cut back to the action, and Peri's laying there bald. If anything, I think that's more scary than when she sits up at the end and starts talking in a deep, scary voice. No matter how much I'm enjoying it here, it still doesn't sit quite right in my mind, and it sticks out too much as a companion departure - not necessarily in a good way. 

People often complain that the effect of this ending gets entirely undermined come the end of the season, when it transpires that she's actually living happily as a warrior queen alongside Yrcanos, and I'm sure I'll make my own mind up about that when I get there. That said, I can't help but think it's been clearly signposted throughout the story - especially in these last couple of episodes! I'm sure Colin Baker tells the story that they only addend the 'happy ending' for Peri later on when he wondered what was real and what had been faked in the trial, but I think it's clearly set up that Peri should be going off to rule with this man! Oh, I don't think it's something that she would ever do by choice, and she'd never purposely give up life in the TARDIS for that particular fate, but I don't think it feels too out of place in retrospect. 

Brian Blessed has actually impressed a great deal throughout this story - far more than I was expecting him to! I mused the other day that you hire him to simply be Brian Blessed on screen, and while there's plenty of that on display in Mindwarp, he actually has lots of rather nice little moments alongside Nicola Bryant in particular, and I'm very impressed with him on the whole. 

Today's episode has continued to take the aspects I was finding scary yesterday - the Doctor not being able to remember what happened - and ramp them up a gear, making things even scarier in the process. I love (and I can't stress that enough, love) the way that the TARDIS appears in the corridor right in the middle of all the chaos, and the Doctor is compelled to walk backwards in to the box. There's something genuinely scary about the Doctor being taken away at just the moment everything comes to a head, and that works so well. I think my only slight criticism about this sequence is that the chaos isn't quite enough for me! You've got lots of supporting artists spinning around in corridors, but I want explosions and people tearing the set apart! Really up the stakes! 

So with that, we've said goodbye to Peri, and we're off on the next stage of the programme's life. I think I like how much you couldn't predict Peri's departure from the way she joins the series back in Planet of Fire, and I'm not sure if I can remember the last time the programme had been shaken up this much between a companion's arrival and departure, either. We're deep in to the period of Doctor Who that many people consider to be the weakest, now, and the introduction of Mel in the next episode is something that many consider to be another step towards death. If I can enjoy her as much as I've enjoyed all the other things recently that I'm not supposed to... I think we're in for a treat! 

DWO’s Spoiler-free preview of episode 8.12: Death in Heaven:

It barely seems possible that we can already be at the end of Peter Capaldi’s first season as the Doctor - and what a ride its been! Death in Heaven is certainly the perfect capstone for the entire series, tying together threats that have been running since Deep Breath at the start of the run, and even a few that stretch back further, in to the eras of earlier Doctors.

Doctor Who Online went to get a preview of the episode at a screening in Cardiff on Tuesday evening, alongside a number of fans of the show. The atmosphere at the event sums up, we think, the general reaction to the whole of Series Eight this year. There was laughter (sometimes raucous, always in the right places), gasps of shock, and even a few teary eyes in places. If killing off regular character Danny Pink in the prattles to the last episode set this story up as one where anything could happen, and no one is safe… well, you ain’t seen nothing yet.

The next statement is probably quite predictable - that series regulars Peter Capaldi, Jenna Coleman, and Samuel Anderson are on fine form, and - as they’ve done almost every week of the run - continue to raise the bar to a whole new level. There are times when Peter’s Doctor will absolutely break your heart, and he plays it beautifully. On equally fine form is Michelle Gomez, now revealed to be the latest incarnation of the Doctor’s arch enemy the Master. Any quibbles people had about making such a drastic change to the character will surely melt away when you see her squaring up to our Twelfth Doctor - the pair are electrifying, and it’s safe to say that the Gomez incarnation will be topping several people’s lists as ‘favourite Master’. Oh, and did we mention - she’s absolutely bananas.

Director Rachel Talalay - who’s helmed both episodes of this finale - provides us with some stunning visuals, and some of the best action sequences that the programme has ever given us. There’s moments here where you genuinely could believe that you’re watching a multi-million dollar hollywood blockbuster, and yet it’s all been realised on a modest TV budget. We’ve heard it said time and time again over the years that the Doctor Who team are some of the hardest working and most skilled people in the industry, and it’s never been more in evidence than at times during this episode. You can really sense the labour of love that’s gone in to making it, and it’s worth every little bit of effort.

You may have noticed that we’re trying to give away as little as possible, and that’s because the full impact of this episode comes best when you sit down not knowing what to expect. We could wax lyrical about the reference to [X], or a cameo from [Y], or reveal that the Doctor… well, anyway. Death in Heaven is Doctor Who at its finest. Action packed, emotional, funny, and a little bit silly. What more could you want?

Five things to look out for:

1) “There is no Clara Oswald. I invented her. I made her up.”

2) “Something for your bucket list…”

3) “He’s on the payroll…”

4) A new title sequence.

5) “Didn’t you think to look?”

[Source: DWO, Will Brooks]

Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start...

Day 674: Mindwarp, Episode Three (The Trial of a Time Lord, Episode Seven) 

Dear diary, 

The thing I'm liking most about Mindwarp is the idea that the Doctor can't really remember anything that's happening here. There's something genuinely unsettling about the moment when he first interrupts the episode to tell the court that he can't remember what he's seeing - and Colin plays it as calm and a little bit scared. He shouts and gestures again only moments later, but suddenly it's because he's genuinely worried by the event,s not because he's putting on a show for the sake of the trial. I love that even he isn't entirely sure that this isn't just the way he behaves, and when he's trying to convince the Inquisitor of his innocence, it comes across as the man trying to convince himself more than anything. This is then all turned back on him. when he does get back the odd pocket of memories, and the Valeyard points out how convenient it is for him to remember now... yeah, this is probably my favourite thing about the trial so far. 

Sadly, though, the episode itself isn't grabbing me at all. I'm getting on better with it now than on previous viewings, and I actually understand better what's going on this time (I'd somehow convinced myself that the sandy-coloured Mentor in this story was a separate character to either Sil or Kiv, and forgotten that he was Kiv's replacement body), but I'm still not enjoying it half as much as I did with The Mysterious Planet. I'm beginning to wonder if it may just be that I don't get on with Philip Martin's style of writing. Vengeance on Varos is often hailed as a total 'classic', and yet I'm not as fussed on it as some people seem to be, and while I've often seen this episode trumpeted as being the best of the Trial season, it's leaving me completely cold! 

A few years ago, I did a different kind of Doctor Who marathon with my friend Nick Mellish, who provides many of the Big Finish audio reviews here on Doctor Who Online. We made our way through all of the Paul McGann audio plays from Storm Warning through To the Death, which comprised ten years of adventures for the Eighth Doctor. We wrote our thoughts about each episode and emailed them to each other, eventually putting together a book which followed the marathon. For a brief period, the Eighth Doctor's companion Charley ends up going off on travels with the Sixth Doctor, and we dutifully followed her for a few weeks, in adventures with Daleks, and Draconians, and even the odd Kroton or two. 

Once we'd finished the marathon, and started to get withdrawal symptoms from not hearing a new episode every day, we decided to do it all over again with a different Doctor. The Sixth incarnation seemed to be the obvious choice, having already been through a few adventures and really enjoying them, and we decided that we'd start with the season of 'lost' stories from the originally planned Season Twenty-Three. Over the last five years or so, Big Finish have dramatised lots of stories originally written for the show and at some point left behind, but when they did this first set, it was something of a novelty, picking up stories that have grown up their own reputation within fandom. Stories like The Nightmare Fair, which would have pitted the Doctor and Peri against the Celestial Toymaker on a holiday to Blackpool, The Hollows of Time, a rematch between the Doctor and the Gravis (and the Master), and The Space Whale, which has been a 'work in progress' story for so many Doctors that it's hard to keep track. And then there's Mission to Magnus. 

Magnus is the story originally proposed by Philip Martin for Season Twenty-Three, long before the format of the trial was imposed. It was to feature the return of Sil, alongside the Ice Warriors, and has always been one of the 'lost' tales that people know a little bit more about. But we didn't really much care for it. We never managed to finish our Sixth Doctor marathon, as real life got in the way slowly, but looking back over the entries wrote to each other for that story... I was mostly just left a bit bored by it, and it's perhaps telling that I don't mention Sil anywhere in my write up. He obviously made very little impact on me! Nick was somewhat less forgiving, because of the way that Martin's scripts tend to treat (and talk about) their female characters. Thinking back to the Eighth Doctor book, neither of us were very keen on Martin's The Creed of the Kromon, either (that's putting it mildly), and so I think this story has decided it once and for all for me - I simply cannot get in to his stories. Here's hoping that the one final episode may well be enough to bring things around...  

Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start...

Day 673: Mindwarp, Episode Two (The Trial of a Time Lord, Episode Six) 

Dear diary, 

I seem to be saying it an awful lot of late (he's not around for long - I'm glad I can make the most of it here and now), but Colin Baker really is fantastic, isn't he? He's got that perfect quality for an actor to play the Doctor, where he can salvage anything, and you really perk up when he's on the screen - and not just because you're looking directly at that coat! In this episode, when tasked with playing a Doctor who's brain has been fried, and isn't quite acting himself, even by this incarnation's standards, he really relishes it and runs with it - there's a few shades of Troughton-as-an-androgum in the performance, and I'm becoming more and more saddened that we've only these two seasons of Colin to watch. I've heard various Big Finish adventures with him in over the years, but I have a feeling that I'll be seeking them out a bit more thoroughly once this marathon is over. People talk about the fact that he had a renaissance on audio, but I love him here and now on screen! 

It's perhaps a good mark of his skill that he's able to stand out so much in this episode... when Brian Blessed has been woken up (oh how tempting to simply write that name in capitals...)! Blessed has become something of a national treasure over the years, and you can sort of see here that he's already started to become a parody of himself. That's not a criticism, mind, because Blessed has managed to go so far into being his own parody, that it's no longer even that - it's just what you want! Philip Martin has said in the past that he was thinking of Blessed for the part and was overjoyed to hear that John Nathan-Turner was thinking along the same lines, and it's not hard to see why, is it? King Yrcanos has been written to be played by Brian Blessed, and you almost get the sense that they've stuck him into a costume, placed him on the set, and told him to just get on and do whatever he wants! 

The actual story today is interesting me a little more than it did yesterday, but only marginally. I can't honestly claim to be enjoying it. Oh, there's lots I am liking here - those aforementioned performances, along with the sets on the whole (there's a story that Colin Baker saw the invoice for that big round door in the set and loudly declared to the rehearsal room that it cost more for these four episodes than Nicola Bryant did! You can almost believe it, though, because the door is a great piece of set, and I'm surprised the cost wasn't deferred by being used lots more in Doctor Who after this, like the modern series does with particularly expensive sets! - on the whole, though, I'm just not all that invested on the events here. 

I wonder if part of it may be that I know Peri will be bowing out in a couple of days, and I've never been fond of her exit (either of them)? There's a vague sense of simply wanting to get that over with, so we can bring in Mel and start the programme off on another new phase. I'm also having what I can only describe as 'Sabalom-Glitz- Withdrawl-Symptoms'... none of the supporting cast in this story are anywhere near as entertaining as Glitz and Dibber! When I was watching Vengeance on Varos, I found myself being rather taken by Sil, and he was often the thing I was enjoying most about the story. Here, though, he's simply boring me, and I can't really decide why. I think it's a combination of the costume not working quite as well here as it did back then (there's a few instances where you can see it's clearly slipped down his face a little), and Nabil Shaban seeming to give a slightly different performance, which just isn't quite working for me. Maybe being surrounded by all these other people in charge of him is lessening the character a bit, where he could be so thoroughly unlikeable the last time around, coming across as being 'the boss'?  

Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start...

Day 672: Mindwarp, Episode One (The Trial of a Time Lord, Episode Five) 

Dear diary, 

More than once over the years, I've heard Mindwarp described as being the best segment of the Trial season, and yet when I've seen the full series before, I really didn't much care for it, and think I remember it as the opposite end of the scale - as the weakest of the stories here! I'm not sure what it was about the story that I didn't like on the last occasion, but I think I can guess from watching this episode; I'm just a little bit bored. 

I'm not even entirely sure why that should be, because there's certainly a lot going on in this episode. You've got an alien world that's looking very alien (more on which in a minute), two 'monsters' attacking our regulars, plus the regulation guards chasing after them and taking them as the 'villains' in the situation, the return of Sil, and lots of action in the trial room itself. The episode is positively bursting with things happening, but almost all of them are failing to grab my attention. The big selling point is surely the return of Sil to the programme, having featured in Vengeance on Varos last season... but that story didn't excite me in the way most people enjoy it, either, so I'm not terribly bothered by his return! 

The one area which I do rather like is the planet's surface. A sea of pink, which washes against rocks of blue under a green sky... and all in the most florescent hue they could possibly achieve. It's ridiculously garish, and incredibly of its time, but I'm really rather impressed with it. This feels like the programme really going out of its way to present us with a truly alien world for the first time since... well, in quite some while, anyway. Often enough, alien planets in the series have settled into being a standard quarry/jungle/only seen from the inside/studio set, and while this is shot out on a simple beach, the effects added in post production really make it look like something a bit special. When you compare this to some of the original location footage in the extras on the DVD... you can see how bland it might have looked otherwise! Did it stand out as much on first broadcast as being this garish, or did it just seem fittingly 'of the time'? 

I seem to be flip-flopping in regards to the actual trial scenes as each episode goes by. A few days ago, I started to find them irritating, before Colin Baker giving a rather brilliant performance managed to win them back around for me. Today, they seem to be perhaps a little over-bearing - I'm sure there's more in this episode than any of the others so far? We seemed to be cutting back and forth every few scenes. 

I'm starting to wonder if I may not mind this so much were we given a bit more going on in each of them; there much have been four or five so far this season which boil down to the Doctor asking if what we're seeing is relevant, and the Inquisitor musing that she's been wondering the same. If there's not much to actually say in these moments, then would they perhaps be better left out? Or, at least, confined to the start and the end of episodes, if they need to be included to remind us of the on-going narrative of the season. I thought that the opening of this episode, for example, was rather good, summing up the story we've just watched, reminding us that there's still some lingering questions about it, and then setting the scene for the next adventure. It's only when we start popping back for the odd line here and there that I start to lose patience... I bet all those supporting artists in Time Lord collars got bored of it, too, having to swivel back and forth on those chairs every three minutes! 

Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start...

Day 671: The Mysterious Planet, Episode Four (The Trial of a Time Lord, Episode Four) 

Dear diary, 

I've said it before during this story, but I really do love Sabalom Glitz. What's surprised me is how much I've enjoyed him being partnered up with Dibber - I' always thought of Dibber as being a weaker link to the character. They're absolutely brilliant together, and it's a bit of a shame that we don't get to see them paired up again in any other stories. There's just so much to love about them, and a certain amount of that needs to be placed at Robert Holmes' door, filling their mouths with plenty of dialogue which has made me smile and laugh almost all the way through their scenes. I'm genuinely hugely surprised that the pair haven't been brought back in any of the Big Finish audios - Tony Selby and Glen Murphy are still working actors, and surely I can't be the only one who would love to hear them back against either the Sixth or Seventh Doctors? I'm going to cross my fingers tightly, because I think this may be my number one thing that I'd love to hear happen! 

These two aren't the only ones to impress me in The Mysterious Planet, either. I've already praised Colin Baker's performance once in the last few days, but it really does bear repeating again here - he's really a very good Doctor. Today's highlight from him comes in the form of his courtroom outburst, in which he riles against the Valeyard and the situation he's found himself in. It's a very over-the-top performance, full of gusto and bravado... and it's perfect for the moment. This incarnation of the Doctor, perhaps more than any other, is prone to being a bit theatrical, and he shows that perfectly here. What makes it all the more compelling is the sheer rage underneath it all. Colin completely goes for the scene with all that he can muster, and it's simply electrifying to watch. We're drawing ever closer to his all-too-brief time in the programme, now, and I really am going to miss him when he's gone. I'd so dearly love to see what this man could have done with the part given a few more years to expand and grow with the character. 

We're also getting nearer to the departure of Robert Holmes from the show, with this being his final complete story for the Doctor. He'll be back again for Episode Thirteen of the Trial season, but we won't be getting any more full stories from the man. Before I’d embarked on a big Doctor Who marathon, writers were largely interchangeable in my head. There was no real sense of ‘[X] writes very good stories’ while ‘[Y] writes very bad ones’, I just had a list of names floating around who had written stories at some point. Even then, though, I knew of Robert Holmes being considered the ‘bed tot the best’. So many other writers for the programme over the years have singled him out as the man who knew how to do it, so it was hard to miss his contribution. I couldn’t have told you much about my own thought’s to Holmes’ stories, because frankly they’d all blended in to the big pot of ‘Doctor Who tales’ in my head. 

But actually, having now sat through all of his contributions to the Doctor Who mythos, I can quite clearly see why he's considered to be such a luminary. Several of his stories have ended up towards the upper end of my ratings since he first cropped up in The Krotons, and I’m going to miss him being a part of the programme. 

And with that, we move on to the second segment of the Trial season - Mindwarp. From a previous viewing, I think of these next four episodes as being my least favourite of the season, but I've found plenty of new things to enjoy about The Mysterious Planet, so I'm hoping that the same will be true as we move forward... 

While I'm here, a quick note about how I'm rating The Trial of a Time Lord. You may have noticed that I'm referring to the different segments by their commonly-agreed-upon titles - The Mysterious Planet, Mindwarp, Terror of the Vervoids, and The Ultimate Foe. I'm really doing this because it makes it easier to discuss them here without you having to think about which part of the Trial, say, Episode Six might be, or Episode Ten. When it comes to rating the story as a whole, I'll be including it as one story (it is, after all, one big story - the credits say so!), but including the scores for the individual segments, too, so we can better see how they fit in to the Colin Baker era on the whole. And to make the 'average rating' list for his era a bit longer - it would be horribly short otherwise! 

Manufacturer: Big Finish Productions

Writer: Nev Fountain

RRP: £14.99 (CD) / £12.99 (Download)

Release Date: October 2014

Reviewed by: Nick Mellish for Doctor Who Online

“Once, long ago, in a land of monsters and corridors, a fair maiden was captured, and placed in a deep sleep.

She was used to being captured, and she had a hero who rescued her on just such occasions. But this time the hero never came.

And the fair maiden slept on.

Eventually, a King rescued the maiden, and made her his bride, which many wise old women might tell you is just another way of capturing fair maidens.

And still the fair maiden slept on.

Then, the hero had another stab at rescuing the maiden from her prison, but he was too late. And, more importantly, he had forgotten the rules of fairy tales.

He didn’t slay the dragon.”

***

It feels like this story has been waiting to be told by Big Finish for a while now.  Their fascination with a post-Trial of a Time Lord Peri goes way back to Her Final Flight, a subscriber special and one of those oft-forgotten plays which I always enjoy whenever I revisit it.  We then change ranges and ping over to The Companion Chronicles with Peri and the Piscon Paradox, which is every bit as good as reputation would have it.  Its writer, Nev Fountain, clearly really cares about Peri as a character and has given her ultimate fate a lot of thought, and Nicola Bryant has rarely been as good as she is throughout that play, squeezing the script for every drop of drama, heartache and laughter she can.  It felt like a decent conclusion to things: open-ended enough to maybe exploit further down the line, but with the option to simply move on now and leave things as they are. (I am desperately trying to not spoil that play here!)

We then switch ranges again, this time to the Main or Monthly Range, depending on what it’s being called this week, and have the Sixth Doctor travelling with Flip, but his heart(s) belong to someone else: Peri.  He simply has to see her; to know how she is doing.  It was clear from the very off how that trilogy was going to end: farewell Flip, prepare for Peri.

And now we are here with The Widow’s Assassin: Peri is back, Flip is gone, the Sixth Doctor is patiently waiting for things to click into place, and Nev Fountain is back in the hot seat, writing the follow-up-in-all-but-name to Piscon Paradox.

The first question is: is it as good? The answer, predictably, is no.  Let’s be honest though, it was never going to be.  Peri and the Piscon Paradox is about as perfect a play as Nev Fountain, and indeed Big Finish, have ever done, so it was going to be hard.

The second question is: is it satisfying for Peri? The answer is… debatable.  For Peri with regards to lines/action here and Bryant’s performance? Yes, it’s very good indeed.  As a continuation of her tale? Not so much.  It takes a rather easy way out, a way which avoids future complicated arguments between the Doctor and Peri about how things ended between them, and whilst that is perhaps understandable, it still feels like it robs us of some weighty drama further down the line.  It just doesn’t feel right or fair after all this time and fanfare.

The third question is: is it a good play? The answer is yes, it is good.  Not brilliant, but higher than average.  It is good.  Fountain is great at writing comedy and there are some genuine laugh-aloud moments across Widow’s four episodes, often in the guise of the hapless prison guards who so ineffectively guard the Doctor.  Halfway between the two guards from children’s television classic Maid Marian and her Merry Men and Evans from The Web of Fear, they sing whenever featured, and a whole host of alien delegates do likewise.

As with Piscon Paradox, there are some twisty-turny plot elements involving time here as well, though I must confess that I saw some of the larger twists coming a while off this time.  I think, in fairness to Fountain, that it is perhaps the result of a lot of twisty-turny plot elements involving time being prominent in the show on TV in recent years, not to mention in Big Finish plays such as Dark Eyes 2, The Light at the End and, indeed, Peri and the Piscon Paradox itself.  It just makes them slightly easier to spot than would otherwise be the case.

Still, Peri is back, and Bryant seems to be having fun alongside Colin Baker.  We’ve Daleks coming up next and the return of the Rani, so things look promising.  Even better, the irksome cliffhanger ending regarding Flip is resolved with an off-hand comment near the end of this play, which genuinely had me cheering: the best move Big Finish have made for a while now!

I am not going to pretend I thought this was the best play ever; in some ways, it disappointed me a bit.  It’s not Fountain’s finest, nor is it Peri’s, the Doctor’s or Big Finish’s.  It is, though, another decent monthly release after the recent Seventh Doctor/Ace/Hector-Hex trilogy, and that bodes well for the rest of 2014.

Manufacturer: Big Finish Productions

Writer: Marc Platt

RRP: £14.99 (CD) / £10.99 (Download)

Release Date: October 2014

Reviewed by: Nick Mellish for Doctor Who Online

“England, 1400. Winter. Blood in the snow. Henry IV has usurped the throne, and deposed King Richard II languishes in Pomfret Castle.

Meanwhile the Doctor and his companions preside over New Year revels at Sonning Palace.

But Sonning is a prison, treachery is in the air and murderous Archbishop Thomas Arundel will stop at nothing to crush the rebellion.

As the Doctor and Barbara take the road to Canterbury, Vicki finds a royal friend and Ian is dragged into a dark web of conspiracy at whose heart sits that teller of tales, Geoffrey Chaucer.”

***

Chaucer! You either like Chaucer or dislike him with a fiery intensity that can set whole libraries aflame (just ask any English Literature graduate, we’re all the same).  Me personally? I really like him and think that The Canterbury Tales is fab through and through, and it has forever surprised me that the show never took the plunge and had our heroes meet him.  Well, until now, that is.

Two stories into this new Early Adventures range now, and we’re flung into The Doctor’s Tale, an historical adventure with all the ingredients one would expect from such a tale: shady characters, political shenanigans, someone famous from Earth’s history who one of the companions happens to know a lot about.  This is a far more ‘authentically’ 1960s-esque piece of Doctor Who than the preceding month’s adventure (though I stress again how much I enjoyed that story), and I suspect much of your enjoyment of it will depend on how keen you are on historical adventures, and quite possibly how much you know about Chaucer, though seeing as every effort is made by Marc Platt’s script to fill you in on the historical/political and, indeed, literary backdrop to the era in which this story is set, you shouldn’t struggle too much.

Taking its lead from the Crusade school of thought, Platt separates the TARDIS crew rather swiftly, giving us two separate strands of story that come together nearer the end of the tale.  It’s a neat move which allows the script to breathe more, and gives both William Russell and Maureen O’Brien, on narrating duties, some good, meaty material to really sink their teeth into.

One thing that did really strike me about this story though is how missed Jacqueline Hill is as Barbara.  The absence of Barbara in an historical story was always going to be notable, and never more so here, where we hear her fill in parts of the plot, take a central role in proceedings, and tick that ‘educational and fun’ remit which the show strived for in its formative years, even when she does take a week’s holiday for the third episode (a nice attention to period detail by Platt).  I’m not surprised, therefore, that Big Finish have announced someone coming in on Barbara-narrating duties for future adventures, and am curious to see how that pans out.  As it stands right now though, much like when Katy Manning takes on the Brigadier or the Third Doctor, you can feel a spectre in the room; a piece of the jigsaw missing.  Indeed, perhaps the most fitting tribute to Hill and her portrayal of the character is the fact that her absence is so keenly felt, here more so than William Hartnell himself, and that for this range and its stories to properly work, the gap is going to need to be somehow plugged.  That’s quite some legacy to be leaving years on.

Back briefly to the play in hand though.  Platt’s script feels very evocative of the era in which it apes, and you can almost picture the creaky special effects as people travel from A to B.  It’s richly enhanced by a stellar performance by Alice Haig as Isabella, who infuses her role with a ferocity comparable to Jean Marsh’s in The Crusade and for me was the standout performance in the whole play (no easy task when you also have John Banks giving it his all with genuine conviction), and, two releases in, the range so far.

The Doctor’s Tale may lack the Boy’s Own air of 1950s adventure serial that Domain of the Voord had about it, but stick with it.  It’s a damn fine story, clearly painting the brutality of life under a dogmatic and fanatical regime (in this instance, a religious one), a life with quite the body count by the end of it.  You’ll cheer for Chaucer, hate Thomas Arundel, and feel every ounce of Isabella’s frustration and pain.  And you’ll miss Jacqueline Hill.

What is a Hartnell historical without Hill? Good, but not Wright.

Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start...

Day 670: The Mysterious Planet, Episode Three (The Trial of a Time Lord, Episode Three) 

Dear diary, 

I'm somewhat surprised just how much I'm enjoying the design in this segment of the trial. I've often looked back on The Mysterious Planet as being just a little bit... rubbish, when it came to the look of the piece. I think I was mostly thinking of two areas - the set of the underground areas, which comes across as very plastic-looking, and the design of the cell in which our heroes find themselves locked up on the surface, because there's a few behind-the-scenes photos of that set which make it look very poorly painted. Actually, though, I'm wrong on both counts. Well, sort of. The cell actually comes across as much better on screen than it does being seen as a set in a studio, and it even looks rather good when the L1 robot is crashing through the wall to kidnap the Doctor. All the underground areas do still look as plastic-y as I remember them being... but I think that actually acts in its favour, giving the set its own unique feel. 

The piece of design I'm most keen on, though, is the big L3 robot - the Immortal One himself. There's something about the sheer stature of the creature which makes it look imposing, especially when he's towering over the two human servants in his control centre. It seems strange to think that this story comes more than ten years after the last big robot like this (in, um, Robot), and I think this one is possibly better. Oh, don't get me wrong, the design of the K1 robot is gorgeous, but it's perhaps that bit too designed. That doesn't take away from it on screen, but it doesn't really come across as being scary. The L3, in darker tones of grey, and with that big pointy 'head' really seems to be a bit more frightening, and I rather like that. 

I'm not so sure that I like the L1 as much, but that's possibly because it's in competition with this bigger older-brother. Do we actually see the L2 at all in this story? I don't think we do. Wonder what it looks like? I've mentioned it a few times in this marathon so far, but I'm a big fan of vintage Blue Peter, and the clip on this story's DVD, introducing the entire Trial season is a particular favourite of all the who-related segments. We get to see how both of this story's robots are controlled ('people power'), and I think it even helps to improve my admiration for the L3 - the poor controller trapped inside the costume has to peer out through the insignia on the chest, which helps to really sum up just how tall it is! 

During yesterday's episode, I complained that I was starting to see the irritation that could be caused by the constant flicking back to the trial room to catch up on the proceedings in the courtroom. I'm thankful to say that today's episode has been the complete reverse of that, and I've positively welcomed the inclusion of these moments. There's a point very early on - pretty much just as we see our characters escape from the cliffhanger - where we revert back to the 'present', and it felt entirely right that we should take a quick break from the main narrative here. I'm also impressed to see mention of the footage being excised at the request of the High Council, as I didn't think that revelation came until later on in the story. I'm already trying to think up ways that I can tie this somewhat more devious version of the High Council in to the Time War. 

While I'm briefly on the subject, I didn't mention the fact in Episode One that the Doctor has been deposed as President of Gallifrey, because of a degradation of his duties. I absolutely love this idea (especially since the Doctor even called on his official status last season in Timelash to help save the day), and I can easily tie this in to the Time War - the High Council know that even the Doctor, with his hatred of the Daleks, wouldn't risk plunging the planet into total war across all of time and space - hence removing him from a position of power, and putting him on trial in a further attempt to reduce his standing... I think this season could prove interesting if viewed from certain angles!